Revenge Recap: Blackouts Be Gone!

1. Bind the blackout-ee’s hands and feet. 2. Nearly drown the blackout-ee – who is, understandably, not psyched – by forcefully submerging her head and torso in a tub of ice water. 3. Repeat until she coughs up a memory that completely, instantly ends her troubling episodes.*

Simple, right? Other feats that happen with surprising ease in the Hamptons this week: Jack starts to forgive mom Stevie for leaving him all those years ago, Victoria makes sure Patrick won’t become a homicidal maniac and Nolan pulls off a pair of aggressively lime green pants.

Read on as we review how all of these events took place in “Struggle.”

* For the love of the Red Sharpie, do not try this at home. Or at work. Or ever, anywhere.

THE WATER CURE| We pick up with Emily angrily stabbing into the double infinity symbol on her front porch, then later crying to Nolan that she unknowingly destroyed her father’s carving during a blackout. “At least it wasn’t some…one?” Noles says, trying to see the silver lining in what, for all intents and purposes, seems like Em’s go-kart ride into madness. He offers to go away with her so they can figure out what’s happening in that pretty head of hers, but she’s got another plan: “I’m gonna kill ‘em all.”

So Nolan calls in the big, British guns. After Emily breaks into Conrad’s hotel room with a fistful of piano wire, some rough looking hair and no real plan, Aiden follows her, knocks her out and hauls her to a nondescript warehouse. She wakes up tied to a chair and ticked that her ex has decided he’s the second coming of Takeda.

But after a few sputtering dunks in the aforementioned ice water, Emily remembers walking in on her dad and Victoria making the naked double infinity sign the night before he was taken. Even back then, little Amanda knew Queen V was bad news, but Papa Clarke didn’t want to hear it. “Why didn’t he listen to me?” Emily says, starting to cry as Aiden draws her near.

Later, Ems declares that she remembers everything she did during her fuzzy periods and – because that soaking apparently also gave her a psychology degree – states that that one memory was causing her to sabotage her mission because she didn’t think the effort was worth it. OK then! Emily and Aiden kiss once before he leaves (Side note: Didn’t he drive her? How’s she getting home?), but neither knows that Daniel’s new P.I. is photographing the smooch for his employer.

ARRIVEDERCI!| Patrick’s guilt over his role in Jimmy’s death drives him to do things both stupid (picking a fight at the rapist’s wake) and really smokin’ hot (working the speedbag shirtless). That’s where Nolan and his green pants find him and tell him that he’s got an empty slot at the Hamptons Arts Walk – and a big deal artist is going to be there looking at people’s work, too.

Still, Patrick is ragey and consumed by protecting his mother. “God, you’ve totally changed,” Nolan informs his former hook-up, who starts to agree after hearing Victoria make some ominous comments about Conrad’s ex-wife Stevie. So when the famous artist offers Patrick an apprenticeship at his Venice studio, he takes it – and only after he leaves do we learn that Victoria orchestrated the whole thing in order to save her son from turning into someone terrible.

IS STEVIE WHO SHE SEEMS?| Stevie’s initial efforts to reconnect with Jack don’t go well, but he senses that she’s holding something back. After a chat about deadbeat moms with Emily, Jack gives his mother another chance to tell him the truth. She confesses that she was an alcoholic when she got pregnant with him, and that even though she’s been sober for almost 20 years, she’s stayed away because “The Hamptons are full of triggers.”

Jack seems to accept that explanation, inviting her over to meet little Carl. But later, after Nolan gives Emily a metal replacement infinity box (that opens only at her touch), something he says jogs her memory and sends her shuffling through her dad’s diary. She re-reads a passage about a 1997 prison visit from a boozy woman claiming to be a lawyer, though David later learned she’d been disbarred. Emily’s convinced it’s Stevie, who clearly hasn’t told Jack everything about why she’s back in town.

GUESS WHO’S EN ROUTE? | Charlotte seems to be doing a bang-up job of walking around the Voulez offices, handing Conrad pieces of paper and telling people what they already know – like when she informs her dad that Pascal LeMarchal is on his way to New York. Of course, Big Daddy Grayson orchestrated the whole thing when he challenged Margaux, whom he knew would be forced to use her dad as backup. Looks like affrontement is on the menu for next week, non?

Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!